Like millions of other sports-starved people, I eagerly anticipated the first two episodes of The Last Dance, ESPN's ten-part documentary mini-series about the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls. Naturally, most of the show's focus is on the team's greatest superstar, Michael Jordan. The first two episodes, which debuted to huge ratings on Sunday night, were generally strong. So…
A popular story, repeated throughout the years involving countless different players to a point where I've chosen to not believe any of them actually happened, goes something along these lines: a newspaper reporter tracks down a legendary former player and asks him, "How do you think you'd fare if you were playing baseball today?" The…
If you haven't read the first two parts of this series, you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here. I have assembled thirty of the greatest baseball teams imaginable. I have set ground rules and parameters for these teams and my wildest fantasies about allowing the greats of multiple generations to square off…
If you haven't read the first part of this series, you can read it here. These thirty super-teams were assembled under the language of Wins Above Replacement. To repeat phrasing I’ve used before, WAR is an imperfect stat, but its greatest strengths are that it is intuitive and it is comprehensive. If you showed the…
If you ask somebody with only a very peripheral level of knowledge about Major League Baseball which franchise's greatest players would create the best all-time team, most would say the New York Yankees. If you asked a casual fan the same question, most would say the New York Yankees. Most of you are probably saying…
In a game show format that many people are saying resembles that of the popular syndicated television show Jeopardy!, John and Turp are joined by NBC Sports writer Drew Silva and Viva El Birdos writer Gabe Simonds, with Turp jumping in as contestant and John serving as host. https://anchor.fm/the-st-louis-bullpen-show/episodes/This---is---St--Louis-Cardinals-Popular-Game-Show-ecc0no As always, check out the podcast…
Last week, apropos of very little, I wrote about the greatest players at each major professional baseball stadium in St. Louis. The next day, I decided to take my extremely cool, not at all nerdy curiosity a level further and figure out the best player at every MLB stadium. I didn't dig quite as deep…
Some of the younger readers of this website have only known professional baseball in St. Louis at one stadium. I’ve seen it at two. Some of you have seen it at three. There are some living people who have seen and remember baseball at four, but anything beyond that goes past living memory of St.…
As a person who devotes large amount of my time to writing about baseball on the internet, the whole "social distancing" thing that we are expected to (and should) do to combat the spread of the COVID-19 virus probably comes a bit easier to me than it does to most, but it is still a…
Baseball isn’t going to start on time. It probably isn’t going to start until decently after “on time”. At this point, I think we’re probably more likely to have Major League Baseball not play in 2020 than we are to have it play in May. This isn’t pure fatalism, and to be clear, I do think there…
St. Louis Bullpen 